What should I do if I have a huge [homebrew-review] question that I need to break into smaller parts?

Question

After asking Is this variant of the Armorer Artificer balanced compared to the existing subclass?, which offered a wide range of options to choose from, I was informed that it simply had too much content. After this, I broke off a smaller chunk of the content, and it still got downvoted (not as much, though, and it mostly stopped once I transcribed the text from the image). The problem is that if I ask a separate question for each weapon, I'm left with lots of questions (which will crowd the "new questions" page) that take time to write. This might also cause me to get flagged for spamming questions (I don't know how the system works). How should I get a homebrew character option of this size analyzed?

Note: I don't have access to most other RPG forums (RPG.net, Reddit, and GitP are all blocked).

Answer 1

If it's a homebrew feature that's so expansive it can't even fit in a question here, I suggest that what you need is to do your own playtesting rather than ask us. I wrote about similar recently here in the context of review for an entire game system.

Content reviews here are particularly good for taking a specific feature and giving detailed notes on it—e.g. detailed examination of one character feature—or taking a broader picture and giving broader notes—e.g. assessment of a broad class and any major issues that stand out about it.

I think if a piece of content is so large it's straining our model, it's also going to strain our capacity to review it in any meaningful sense. A variant that large is going to have so much going on, there will just be so many different things to review and assess and so many variables to take into account. We can point out, like, a few things here and there, but we can't reasonably approach a comprehensive review. It would reach the point of even breaking our Q&A model such that nobody could approach a comprehensive answer. There's just too much stuff. Breaking it up piecemeal isn't going to work so well either because then we're not evaluating it in the context of the bigger picture.

What you need to do is instead do some legwork here: you've written the class, now you need to play it and test it, and compare it with other features to make sure you're on the right track, and take note of any problems that come up, and try to fix them. What you can then do is if you come across specific issues you're having trouble resolving with specific features as surfaced by playtesting and research, come to us and ask about those specific things you're running into and how to resolve them.

Playtesting is an incredibly rich vein of feedback that will make all kinds of issues stand out very fast, and they'll be issues you can work to identify and solve. We can help you with that process, but this will be the kind of thing where the benefit you get out and our capacity to help you will be proportionate to the work you put into playtesting effectively and into attempts to solve the problems yourself.

Answer 2

You don’t have to include the full details of a published class

We deal with published content all the time that we don’t reproduce in full, for copyright reasons among others. As long as the content is accessible in some fixed form—as opposed to a Google Doc you could keep changing or something—that’s “good enough” for a valid question.

Broad questions seeking broad-strokes answers are acceptable

We handle fairly-broad questions, as long as they’re interested in similarly broad-strokes answers. “Does anything in here stand out as problematic?” is a reasonable enough question to ask. A little more detail, like, “What balance point is this content comparable to?” can work too, provided there is a sufficiently-detailed sense of what balance points exist (e.g. tiers).

At that point, though, you’re not asking about individual internal options; you’re not getting an analysis of each one. You get specific notable options called out, ideally, but that’s all.

But I wouldn’t hold out much hope of actually getting a review

The reason that the above works for official content is because a lot of people have access and familiarity with that content. If it’s in the core rulebook, people playing that game are familiar with it, think about it, talk about it. They can give that bird’s-eye-view overview because they’ve already worked it out for their own purposes and in discussion with other players—they’re telling you something they have already learned, rather than figuring something new out.

For unofficial content, the odds of finding someone with the relevant expertise are slim. The most likely result is that your question goes unanswered.

Actually, the most likely result is that your question gets downvoted and/or closed inappropriately, because too many people on this site think “I can’t answer it” means a question is bad.